The present invention relates to vibrating railway ballast tamping tools and more particularly to devices for retaining the tamping tools in the tamping tool head.
Vibrating tools, particularly those of the oscillatory type, have enjoyed great popularity in the railroad industry due to being used as positive amplitude impact tools working from a completely enclosed vibrator gearbox.
Normal wear and tear of the tool blade in the railroad ballast makes it necessary to repeatedly replace the tamping tools with either new tools or resurfaced tools, at frequent intervals. The replacement requires the disassembly of the tools from the tool holders of the head. The tool holders have to be in close proximity to the vibrator housing (this is particularly true of the oscillatory type) and this allows very limited space for fastening devices, such as studs and nuts, between the underside of the vibrator housing and the tops of the tool holders.
Furthermore, as the tamping tools are mounted to the tamping tool heads underneath a railroad ballast tamping machine, access to the tools is very limited and the time required to change the tamping tools, often after only one or two weeks operation, is considerable and costly.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a tamping tool head arrangement which is relatively cheap and simple and which requires relatively less time to replace a set of tamping tools than the time required with present tamping heads.